Gaka Mira (°1970) grew op in a small town near the medieval town of Bruges in Belgium. From childhood on he had a passion for drawing and painting on large format papers he found in the printshop of his father. The art books rolling from the press formed his inspiration. While pursuing a career as a psychotherapist, music teacher, coach and expedition leader in Arctic regions and mountains, he never stopped studying and creating art. In his early years he was inspired by the old masters like Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Eyck and influenced by his favorite contemporary artists like Picasso, Miro, Duchamp, Broodthaers, Andy Warhol, Leon Spilliaert and many others. For the last thirty years he was a vast visitor of the Venice Biënnale and numerous exhibitions, meanwhile developing his artistic and unique voice. In 2022 he decided to entirely devote his professional life to his passion for creating art. 

Gaka Mira unifies abstract and figurative in stunning, almost 3-dimensional images created with acrylic paint, pure pigments and resin. He reframes reality by placing the subjects he photographs while wondering through cities with his 50 year old analogue point and shoot Minolta, in an abstract universe. We are all born in an abstract world without meaning, which due to geography, culture, language, believe systems is given sense. By removing the context and reframing the subject in a meaningless universe, he invites the viewer to question his believes, to simply feel and respect life in it’s mysterious way. The search for sense is a quality exclusive for humans and what unifies all of us. 

Reframing the human condition is the overal theme in his work. He is liberating people from the identity given by their social context. Poor or rich, homeless, refugees, businessmen,… isolated from the original context they regain humanity in it’s purest form, immersed in a cosmic world. 

This social constructionism, which he studied with Kenneth Gergen (professor in psychology at Swarthmore college), is something he plans working on in experimental documentary-art movies in the future, alongside the breathtaking paintings he creates.